0 needs-build for m68k.
No, unfortunately not for unstable/m68k -- we're still at >200 there.
I'm talking about the experimental/etch-secure/sarge-volatile wanna-build databases, which are consulted by only one buildd at the moment, quickstep.nixsys.be. For some reason, they appear to be empty since today.
Under normal circumstances, that'd make me happy. These aren't normal circumstances, though—I suspect a bug or (worse) hardware issue somewhere. Last I checked (about a week ago or so), there were quite a number of packages in needs-build for experimental, and quickstep's been building only etch-secure packages since.
Unfortunately the people who could check out what the hell is going on aren't available for the moment... so I sent a mail, hopefully that'll work.
Why I left GNOME
There's a heated discussion going on over on Planet Debian currently about how Galeon 1.3.x dropped a lot of configuration items as compared to Galeon 1.2.x, and how this is disappointing some of the more advanced users. The claim is that by dropping some of the more advanced features, you won't scare off novice or casual users who don't know what all those thing actualy mean.
This is all backed by usability test such as one done by Sun, in which people who've never used the system before are put in front of a GNOME desktop, are being asked to do a few things with the system, and their progress on that is monitored; also, they're being interviewed afterwards, so that they can give their opinion.
While such work is probably tremendously important to make sure the system is useful for those who don't use it all that often, it's horribly important that you don't forget that such people do not make up the majority of your users. Creating a system that's tremendously useful for people who only use it for ten minutes in their whole life but tells advanced users to go fuck themselves and delve into some obscure and hardly documented gconf-tool frobnitz if they want their email program to stop making sound if they get new mail is horrible. Having a website that links to all sorts of community and developer information, but doesn't even have a fucking 'documentation' link on the front page (or on any of the pages linked to from that page, except the 'Developers' one which contains links to developer documentation) is completely and utterly useless. Someone once pointed me towards where the users' documentation is, but I forgot to bookmark it, and have lost the link.
Contrast to ion. Granted, I could start using GNOME a few minutes after I'd logged on (two minutes for GNOME to start up, five seconds for me to have a look at everything there and to start clicking away), and the same wasn't actually true for ion3. However, ion does point me towards its documentation with its very first message, and while I needed more than a few minutes to read it, I already had everything I needed: the manpage is concise, clear, and to-the-point; and down the bottom, there's a link to the ion website, which contains a 'Documentation' link in the second paragraph—the first paragraph being a short and concise explanation of what ion is.
Of all the bad things I've got to say about Windows, there's one thing I'll have to give them: at least they got it right that you shouldn't fucking mess with the registry. I don't know how gconf is supposed to work (even after googling for the documentation, and studying it as well as I could a while back), and I wouldn't call myself a novice user; so how is such a novice user then supposed to understand all this gconftool and gconf-editor whiz-bang-hoopla?
The main argument seems to be that this is wrong:
Which is a good point. But the solution that the GNOME people seem to push is not, in fact, a solution:
Because it misses at least this:
or, even better, this:
But, well. Since it's utterly clear that the GNOME people are not interested in anyone who's been using their system for more than 10 minutes, I guess the best thing to do is to use something else...
Gnome followup
Funny how people start to get all defensive if people start giving their opinion about software they like very much, and that opinion is quite negative. I've had a rather high number of comments on my blog, on IRC, and have seen some in other blog posts on Planet Debian, too.
For clarity: I didn't claim that the Gnome people need to do this or that; I just explained why I dislike it. If people are interested in my opinion, great; if not, too bad. I couldn't care less. After all, I didn't marry Gnome or anything—I used to be an Enlightenment user for three years before I started using Gnome, and switched to ion now after using Gnome for less than a year.
And yet, so many comments... it would seem that at the very least, the Gnome policy to constantly hide away features which used to be there is quite controversial.
Uhh.
I tried all day to get rid of this.
configure:23976: gcc -o conftest -Wall -g -O2 -I/usr/include/PCSC -I/usr/lib/wx/include/gtk-2.4 -DGTK_NO_CHECK_CASTS -D__WXGTK__ -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -D_LARGE_FILES conftest.c -pthread -lwx_gtk-2.4 -lpcsclitep -lpthread >&5 /usr/bin/ld: dynamic variable `_SDA_BASE_@@WXGTK_2.4' is zero size /usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/gcc/powerpc-linux-gnu/4.0.2/../../../../lib/crt1.o(.rodata+0x0): unresolvable R_PPC_ADDR32 relocation against symbol `_SDA_BASE_@@WXGTK_2.4' /usr/bin/ld: final link failed: Nonrepresentable section on output collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
Hints on where to look are welcome. I redesigned that pcsclitep stuff's build system from something ugly to something automake/autoconf/libtool-based, and it still doesn't work. I don't even know what the message means—what the fuck is an R_PPC_ADDR32 relocation?
Update: seems wx 2.4 has been miscompiled on PowerPC. Grmbl. Ryan's scheduled a binNMU, already. Wonderful!
Teaching.
De achtste mei duizend negenhonderd achtenzeventig, te
11.15 uur, is door Mij, ondergetekende, Petrus Ludovicus De
Rooy, Burgemeester en Ambtenaar van de Burgelijke Stand der
gemeente KAPELLEN, arrondissement en provincie
ANTWERPEN, aanstonds na vaststelling, ten Gemeentehuize in dubbel
opgemaakt de AKTE VAN GEBOORTE van
W o u t e r, van het
mannelijk geslacht, op ZES MEI van dit jaar te 13.20 uur,
alhier geboren in de kraamkliniek Sint-Jozef, Kerkstraat 5, zoon
van Jozef Leopold Maria
V e r h e l s t, electricien,
geboren teTEssenderlo provincie Limburg op vier oktober duizend
negenhonderd zesenveertig en van zijn echtgenote Judith
Martha Elise R o o s e n,
verpleegassistente, geboren te Kuringen provincie Limburg op twintig
augustus duizend negenhonderd zevenenveertig, beiden wonende te Ekeren
provincie Antwerpen Bund 45.
Volgens de aangifte aan mij gedaan door gemelde vader in het bijzijn van
Ludovicus Vanhoof, directeur ziekenhuis, veertig jaar oud, wonende te
Ekeren provincie Antwerpen Pinksterbloemlaan 15 en van Jean-Marie De
Munck, bediende, drieëndertig jaar oud, wonende te Ekeren, hoogpadlaan
103.
Na voorlezing dezer akte, hebben de comparanten benevens Mij getekend
<signatures>
The above is the literal text of my birth certificate, including the one spelling error it contains ("teTEssenderlo" should've been "te Tessenderlo"). In Belgium, the law requires (or required? it might've been changed, not too sure) that when a child is born, this is announced within three days at the municipal administration of the municipality where the child is born, together with two "witnesses". It isn't strictly the father's job to do this, but since mothers usually stay in the hospital for a few days after giving birth, in practice this is the father's job.
The text basically says that I was born may 6th, 1978, at 13:20, and that my father went to the municipal offices two days later at 11:15; it says when and where my parents where born, what their professions are, where they live, and the age and identity of both witnesses. One of them is Ludovicus (known as Louis) Vanhoof, then the manager of the hospital where I was born—but as it happens, also my uncle and godfather. I don't know the other witness; no doubt this is some guy who was waiting at that office for a young father so that he could be the "witness"—and then enjoy the beer that the father would no doubt offer him to celebrate the newly-born child. It wouldn't be the first time; it's actually uncommon that my father did have a real witness.
If you want to see this text, you need to go to the municipality where you were born, and ask them to make a photocopy of it. They'll go in their archives, pick out the right page, copy the thing, and charge you a rather high amount of money for that. But not if you need it because you're teaching.
Yes, I've just started a second job as a teacher. I've been a co-owner of NixSys for about two years now, and while things aren't going all that bad, they're not going perfect either; we earn enough money to pay off our company's costs, and perhaps a slight bit more, but most certainly not enough to live off of it. As a result, I was getting myself into quite some debts, and this was slowly becoming a rather dramatic problem. Thus, I started looking for a part-time job, one that I could easily do part-time while still being somewhat related to IT. As it turns out, that isn't all that easy to find; IT specialists are rarely if ever hired part-time.
Except in education. As of yesterday, I'm officially a "praktijklector" at the Karel de Grote-Hogeschool in Antwerp, teaching IT to future IT teachers (call it "meta-teaching" if you like); those who will teach about IT to people between the ages of 12 and 16 (IIRC).
The pay check isn't high enough to pay off all my debts all at once, but at least I won't have to worry too much about money anymore. Which is good.
But, boy. Do they need paperwork! On monday and tuesday I've prepared ~10 different documents, including my birth certificate. Most of those documents I could acquire free of charge, but some — like a doctor's testimony that I won't be a medical risk to the students, and a "proof of nationality" — required a bit of money. I also didn't care about most of them (rather boring stuff), except for that birth certificate, which is pretty cute. But as it turns out that still isn't enough. Grmbl. Does the word "Bureaucracy" mean something here?
Anyway.
Does this mean that I'm leaving NixSys? No, not at all. On the contrary, actually; since this is a part-time job, I can now continue to work for NixSys (albeit no longer full-time), and can be sure I'll be able to pay stuff that needs to be payed; the alternative would've been to go do some interim job for a few months, like I did last year, in which case I'd have left NixSys for those months. I prefer it this way...
Nokia logic
"When the battery is almost empty, you start making sound and turn on the light."
Very good idea.
What does google tell me that I need?
Warning: silly meme follows.
(the idea: go to google, search for "<your name> needs", post the top (or "best") ones. Yes, yes, very silly)
Top ones:
- Wouter needs to have his brown star comforted with a chair leg. *shudder* Wouter needs to update his own policy and reform process. Wouter needs us, AND WE (...)
- Wouter needs to get his ass away from TWINE. (I'm not sure what TWINE is, but it doesn't sound good, indeed)
- Wouter needs to get a personalized plate for that.
- Wouter needs meppel. (whatever that may be)
- Wouter {NeEdS EnChAnTrEsS ShIt (sic)
- Meanwhile, Wouter needs stories and photos for the magazine, So let's get back To that before I start crying.
- since Wouter needs time to look things up, may I help you out on this one?
- Wouter needs to vent, I think, and the people here are big enough to take it.
Right.
Job applications
Daniel Burrows mentions how he hasn't gotten any reply from potential employers where he sent cover letters that are written like the Rules require.
Reading that reminds me how I never ever got hired after writing such a letter myself, either.
- My first job after graduating was at DHL. I got there because I had listed myself on stepstone, a Belgian career site that (at the time, dunno about now) featured a very detailed list of abilities you could claim your knowledge of. Someone at an interim office needed someone for DHL who could work with UNIX and Oracle (both of which I claimed knowledge on that site), so she contacted me; a few days later, I was working at DHL's global headquarters.
- My next job was at a small company in Leuven. I was, in fact, their first employee. I got there after reacting to one of the employers' statements in their .sig on usenet that they were looking for a new employee. A few days later, we met in a bar somewhere in Leuven for a drink. We've had a few more of such meetings, until I was hired.
- Next, I worked at Template. This one was very nice—one of the
people who work there, who would eventually become my boss, sent me a
private email asking whether I knew someone who could set up an email
server and a firewall under Linux.
Uh, me?!
Turns out he'd been googling a bit, found quite a few postings from me on be.comp.os.linux, and was rather impressed by my knowledge. I didn't have to convince him that it was a good idea to hire me. - Next I co-founded NixSys. Which obviously doesn't involve job applications, though it is otherwise quite stressful.
- My most recent job (even if only a part-time one) did involve something close to one of those formal letters (not an actual one; but still the first one I ever wrote, actually), though only indirectly; I applied for a job at the department where I graduated first, but didn't get hired there; however, a few weeks later I received an email from someone at a different department (which, obviously, also means a different job). That's about two weeks ago now, and she didn't need any explanation either...
All things considered, I do think the value of such cover letters is highly overrated. Not only do most employers not really care about them; one could also wonder whether you would want to work at a place where paperwork is so important that you couldn't get hired if you're the best guy for the job, but you made an error in the paperwork...
Keeping up with new stuff
So I'd heard a lot about Ruby on Rails lately, so I went and had a look at their website. Only looked at the (15 minute) introduction movie, but it looks impressive. Very, very impressive. It's just that I don't have much use for it ATM, but I might start using this for some next web-based project.
More buildd work
I've gone from managing two buildd machines a few months ago, to five now, six or seven soon. Whew.
New machines are bob and wendy (armeb), and ska/kiivi (ska was set up around the time kiivi broke down; kiivi's been fixed now, so that means one extra box too). Future ones may be jazz (m68k; Quadra950) and a third armeb box. Getting pretty crowdy—but nothing I can't handle. Yet. Though it is the highest number of buildd machines I've ever managed before.
Since Christian Steigies is back from holiday, he had a look at garkin, his atari-with-CT60-board. It had lost its serial connection while he was away, so it didn't build anymore. But other than that the connection was gone, the box was still alive and kicking -- just needed to download a few megabytes of updates, which takes rather long through serial. In case you wonder: there's no ethernet connection, because the ethernet boards haven't been manufactured yet (they've been designed and ordered at the factory which will create them, but that hasn't happened yet).
So with kiivi and garkin now both building again, the graph is going in the right direction again since a day or two. It's even more visible on the second graph; if you have a look at the new quarter graph, you'll see that the level of up-to-dateness is currently at its highest level in weeks; I count 28 days between now and the previous peak that is at approximately the same level as today. Which is good, of course.
I'm quite happy about that quarter graph, BTW. The usefullness of the other two graphs (one with all information since the statistics were being gathered, one with the information of the last two weeks only) was seriously deteriorating. What this graph shows is way more useful... now if only there'd be a quarter version for the other graph as well...
Buildd docs
Steve Kemp wonders where the documentation for buildd is. Or how to set it up. Well, good news: it's on the Debian.org website. Since about a year, actually. It contains a cheat sheet for those wanting to set up their own buildd, some background information on the whole system, and an explanation about the different states a package can have in the wanna-build system, which was based on my (now defunct) own page. Plus some more on the overview page.
I'd say, go check it out; and if you've got any questions, feel free to ask...
PARISC
In Oldenburg, Joey gave me a PARISC box, an Apollo 715/50. It wasn't complete—no RAM, no hard disk, no CD-ROM or other media—but the system itself seemed complete and functional. Unfortunately, it isn't.
I added some RAM that I took from my parent's old computer (196MB in total, IIRC) and tried power on the box. Didn't work. When I powered it up, the machine powers up its fan for a short while before shutting it down again; then the fan moves to a lower rate, and the machine appears dead. Well, mostly so; there's no output on the VGA port, and the LEDs don't do anything anymore, either.
But those LEDs would appear to be helpful, if one would know what they mean. Unfortunately, the box came without manual, so figuring out exactly what they mean all by myself is going to be painful.
Google to the rescue.
I found an archive of the comp.sys.apollo newsgroup, with loads of postings from 2000. One of them also mentions failure to boot, no output, and mentions that all LEDs except one are on at the end. That's the same as what happens here, except that in my case the one-but-last one are on, rather than the last one. A reply suggests that the machine couldn't find the boot disk, and that therefore the box can't be booted.
So, lemme get this straight: if the boot disk is having issues (or not available, as in my case), Apollo machines simply decide to not do anything?
Fuck.
Update: okay, turns out the HP Website still has a PDF of the model 715 service manual, which contains an explanation of the LED error messages. Turns out it means "No Memory Found". Hm.
Watch this space.
Darn!
wouter@country:~$ LC_ALL=C date -d '1978-05-06 + 10000 days' Wed Sep 21 00:00:00 CEST 2005
I had planned to hold a party that day, since I discovered this back in August, but I forgot.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Graph continuing to go up
The graph is continuing to go in the right direction. We're now at a level just short of the 95% line—the ARM people were below where we are now only a week ago; we haven't been this high since the beginning of the quarter graph (or, in other words, since a few days after the Sarge release), so I guess it's safe to say we're past most of our problems, now.
<touches wood>
On the other graph, our progress isn't as impressive. That's normal, since that graph shows all packages whereas graph2 only shows those packages that have been built at least once; and since packages that haven't been built before are deprioritized. However, the progress is still very visible; we're now just short of the 90% marker, which we've been under for 54 days already.
That being said, I'd just like to thank whoever added that quarternary graph also for the "normal" graph, rather than just graph2. The others (one two-weekly, one "since ever") were really losing their usefulness.
PARISC 2
I talked previously about my Apollo, and how I was happy with my finding the manual on the hp website. The problem seemed to be the RAM.
So, I replaced it. Rather than using two 32MB EDO SIMMs, I'm now using two 1MB FastPage SIMMs, and that resulted in the LED pattern changing to something else. Progress!
Except that the new pattern isn't listed in the manual.
Manuals are great, especially if they're complete. Grmbl.
NBD 2.8 released.
I finally bit the bullet and released NBD 2.8 today. I'm quite confident that it's rather working, but no guarantees (yet).
I also uploaded Debian packages of 2.8.0-1 already. And 2.8.0-2 as well -- forgot build-dep at first. Whoops.
Anyway, additional tests are welcome.
Train hacking
Yesterday evening, as I took the train home from work (during peak hours, for a change), someone (by the books he was carrying and the clothing he was wearing, obviously a student) came to sit next to me. I was hacking on NBD at that time, trying to add config file support (the first item in the roadmap for 2.9; more on that probably "soon"). As he moves to sit down, I notice the cover of one of his books. Which is that of the best computer-related book ever. No, really. I have the third edition of that book, really need to buy the fourth some day.
Anyway. As I see that cover, I ask that guy whether it's the fourth, and make a remark about how truly good the book is. To which he answers with "yeah, and that's a truly good laptop, too".
Turns out he actually meant the operating system, rather than the
hardware (which I thought at first). Well, I didn't see that one coming
